‘Happiness curve’ bottoms out at 44: study

‘Happiness curve’ bottoms out at 44: study

Researchers say we shouldn’t get too down about hitting age 44, as many 70-year-olds are as happy and healthy as young adults. (File photo) (ABC News: Giulio Saggin)

Those approaching middle age like to think that life begins at 40, but research suggests that just a few years later we are at our most depressed.

Scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom who studied happiness and depression levels in 80 countries, have pinpointed 44 as the most unhappy year of life.

But they say we shouldn’t get too down about it, as many 70-year-olds are as happy and healthy as young adults.

Happiness is a U-shaped curve according to this research. As middle-age approaches the average person will slide down the U to hit rock bottom at the age of 44.

They’ll be stuck in that trough for quite a few years but by the time they are in their 50s, assuming their physical health is still intact, their happiness levels will go up and risk of depression go down.

Andrew Oswald is professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England. Along with a colleague in the US he analysed data on happiness and depression levels in more than 80 countries, including Australia.

He says there was a remarkable uniformity in the findings which applied to men, women, single and married people, with or without children, and to the rich and the poor.

“We didn’t expect to see this over and over again, in many, many dozens of countries and we didn’t expect to see it so clearly in mental health measures, depression measures, say, as well as in broader happiness and simple life satisfaction,” he said.

Knowing our limits

Professor Oswald says the most plausible explanation for the U-curve is to do with the recognition in middle-age of our limitations.

“[The cause of the downward trend is] probably start your life expecting too much of yourself being the general manager, being the Australian cricket team, winning a Nobel prize, whatever it is,” he said.

“And you discover as you go through your 30s and don’t achieve that and that’s a painful realisation. If you can let that go in middle-age, maybe that’s the secret of why our people in this study become happier and mentally healthier.”

He says that it is possible that people who are incredibly high achievers will not experience that trough at the age of 44 or thereabouts.

“I suppose the problem with high achievers is I suspect their aspirations run even further ahead,” he said.

“You know, two or three people have actually won the Nobel prize twice. I suppose some Test captains go on for 20 years and so on.

“In any case those are too rare, those individuals, so I would just go back to our data. The average person in Australia or Britain or America, most countries, will follow a U-shape in mental health through their own life course.”

Better with age

Professor Ian Hickie, from the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney, agrees that life gets better in the late 40s. He says ageing is quite a good thing in mental health terms.

“Certainly the evidence we’ve got is if there is a time in your life you’re going to be miserable and complain about it, it’s mid-life,” he said.

“When you’re young you’re hopeful, you’re optimistic, despite your difficulties and as you age what you have to look forward to is actually better mental health.

“Contrary to most people’s ideas, getting older doesn’t get with going more miserable and having more troubles, it actually correlates with better coping with life and feeling better about your life. It seems the middle years are the killers. You just got to survive the middle years.

At age 48, Professor Hickie says he thinks he’s past the worst point in his life.

“I feel I am just going out the other end and from here on in life’s a breeze,” he said.

Victor Hugo said 40 was the old age of youth and 50 the youth of old age. And Professor Oswald also stresses that there is a positive message to take from the lesson of the U-curve of happiness.

“Just generally this research is, I hope, useful to somebody going through their 40s, maybe finding it hard,” he said.

“You are completely normal and if you stick in there then on average life will get better through your remaining decades.”

8 Responses

Oh yes…the old “bell curve” of happiness and all things stable…the broad brush that your researchers use to quantify and thereby validate an “average” life…is the same old problem of exactly why people want a Universal god in the universe…who does not confine life in the extemporaneous visions of datum of the actual extent of the melee of assimilation within society…such as not to revert towards somekind of social darwinism…this fact alone, stands in the overburdened datum of underfunded schools, lack of political facilitation of the poor and disenfranchised, let alone the victims of the assualts on every good endeavor of a younger person to follow their hearts conviction in a world the emmeliorates it’s disproportionate amount of suffering and inflation. I suggest a well defined mission statement and triage…

I’m interested to know exactly who conducted your study…It seem’s that the popularization of psychology by renouned psychologists like Freud and Carl Jung (of which is very strong today) still isn’t “good enough” for understanding the complex processes of association’s in the societal fabric that can facilitate in the endeavor of every sentient being to be part enfranchised into the dream of happiness…I suggest that your post graduates (however well intentioned) get some real life working knowledge…and perhaps a state sanctioned cerificate or redemption for people to find their inner supermodel hollywood actress or rockstar…I think that would suffice as a good surrogate for everybody in a generic sense to find the ontological and epistomological struggle for happenstance as coined in Parliament back in 1548.

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